


The Maker Makes

by SinceWhenDoYouCallMe_John



Series: Brokeback Series [2]
Category: Brokeback Mountain (2005), Brokeback Mountain - All Media Types, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Hopeful Ending, Ficlet, John Watson POV, M/M, first person POV, for Pride 2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-21
Updated: 2018-06-21
Packaged: 2019-05-26 07:50:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14996225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SinceWhenDoYouCallMe_John/pseuds/SinceWhenDoYouCallMe_John
Summary: “She invitin’ you over for supper this Sunday, then?” he says, readin’ the thoughts on my face as I hold the fragile pink paper in my calloused hands.I rub the back of my neck. “Somethin’ like that. . .” My eyes scan her perfect slanted handwriting a second time, then a third, confirming that what I’m about to open my mouth and say is the actual truth.“Actually, looks like she’s gone and invited you too,” I finally say, speaking over Sherlock puttin’ some fat strips of bacon on to fry.He stops in his tracks. Looks over his shoulder just a bit with a tense back. “That right, huh?”





	The Maker Makes

**Author's Note:**

> The world has been heavy lately, and current events, mixed with Pride month, have been really weighing on my mind. I sat down and started writing this as a way to process some emotions, intended just for myself to reconnect with two of my favorite characters and spend some emotional time with them up on Baker.
> 
> By the time I finished, though, it wasn't the ficlet I had been expecting, but I made the decision, ultimately, to post in hopes that maybe it will help all of you take a moment to breathe, process, and visit Baker too.
> 
> Keep in mind this is a hopeful ending, not exactly a 'jump up and down' happy ending, but we all know that the world Sherlock and John discuss in this fic will, eventually, in some places, come to pass.
> 
> Knowledge of "He Was a Friend of Mine" isn't necessary, but very helpful. This ficlet takes place about a year after that fic left off, in the late 1980's in rural Wyoming. Alma Jr. is John's daughter with his ex-wife Alma, who went on to marry Monroe.
> 
> Title comes from the Brokeback soundtrack song "The Maker Makes" sung by Rufus Wainwright. Listen to it [HERE.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fh-q76T4lEg/)
> 
> Self care is critical and important, especially in stormy, heartbreaking times like these. Enjoy <3

Come the day Alma Jr.’s little girl is exactly six months old, I get a letter on pink stationary in the mailbox invitin’ me and Sherlock to Sunday supper.

Sherlock done knows it the second he walks in the back door, fresh from mucking out the horse stalls and feedin’ our new little flock of sheep. I don’t even have to say a word.

“She invitin’ you over for supper this Sunday, then?” he says, readin’ the thoughts on my face as I hold the fragile pink paper in my calloused hands.

I rub the back of my neck. “Somethin’ like that. . .” My eyes scan her perfect slanted handwriting a second time, then a third, confirming that what I’m about to open my mouth and say is the actual truth.

“Actually, looks like she’s gone and invited you too,” I finally say, speaking over Sherlock puttin’ some fat strips of bacon on to fry.

He stops in his tracks. Looks over his shoulder just a bit with a tense back. “That right, huh?”

I hum. For a few minutes, we’re both of us silent, standin’ in the stillness with the bacon crackling on the old wood stove. Finally he turns around to face me, leanin’ back on the tile countertop he done built new for us last month.

It’s the silent communication we’ve somehow gone and mastered over twenty years, even with a hell of a lot of that time spent aching miles apart. The eyes and the mouths. Lookin’ at each other through the thick, dusty light of our farmhouse, across the front seat of my old truck, over a campfire high up in the clouds. Through the mists on Baker.

He tilts his head, and his spine shrinks. I can read the question clear as day in the grey of his eyes, whether I even want him to go. If I think he’ll go and tarnish everythin’ by stepping into the light of my other life. 

I place the letter down on the pile of Sherlock’s correspondence on the kitchen table. There’s dirt smudged on it from my hand.

I think of that evening, lifetimes ago, when I sat in my truck at the bottom of Baker, back when I thought he was dead and gone. When his harmonica wouldn’t stop playin’ over and over in my head, and I would have given almost anything to go and be with him up in the fog.

How only the memory of little Alma Jr. standin’ with me on my black nights in the kitchen kept me from sendin’ my soul up into the sky where I thought Sherlock Holmes was waitin’ all alone for me to join him.

I take time to clear my throat, lettin’ him see the thick emotion in my eyes. He looks small, even standin’ there in his old Stetson hat and the nice maroon checkered shirt I got him for Christmas. 

“I ain’t goin’ without you,” I say, soft as snow.

Somethin’ small cracks on his face, flying ‘cross his mouth. The bacon on the stove is long gone and burned.

He swallows. Takes a little breath and nods. We don’t have to say anything else at all.

-

Four days later finds us on the doorstep of one of the prettiest little houses in town, with brimming flowerbeds along the porch and a wicker rockin’ chair. The bright red Dodge Challenger ain’t parked in the driveway, and I realize with somethin’ like a wave of relief that Kurt must be out workin’ the oil fields. That he isn’t home.

Sherlock notices, too, when I glance back at him. We both of us never talked about what the hell we were gonna do if Kurt somehow took one look at us and figured out we weren’t just ranchin’ friends.

We sure as hell hadn’t talked about whether we should warn Alma Jr. she was about to let her baby girl have Sunday supper with a ghost.

We stand on the porch for a long minute before I ring the bell. Heat drops sweat down my spine, makin’ my flannel shirt go damp. We’re both in our Sunday best, which I haven’t worn since the Christening, and Sherlock hasn’t worn for years.

Sherlock looks handsome in the sunlight, glowin’ just like he was that first time I ever saw him leanin’ against his truck in the gravel parkin’ lot. I look at his little pulse flicker along the side of his smooth neck. He looks at the front door and nods.

My little girl hugs me tight when she sees me after openin’ the door. It hits me square in the chest how much I hadn’t realized I’d been missin’ her.

“Thanks for comin’ daddy,” she whispers. Her hair smells like a memory I never realized I forgot. I ain’t seen her since I walked away from the church near six months ago after the Christening, after I’d done stood in a corner and not made eye contact with anybody for three hours, lettin’ the cold cuts of ham on my paper plate grow warm.

I know it’s time. I take a deep breath and let go of her little body. Step aside so she can take a good look at who’s standin’ behind me. 

Her eyes go wide as the moon, and she gasps.

My heart stops beatin’ in my chest. I stand there, frozen as ice, as Sherlock takes a step up beside me on the sweatin’ porch.

“Believe the last time I saw you you was just a little thing in John here’s truck,” he says, voice calm as a clear sky, as a wide open meadow in the summer breeze. Smooth as a whiskey spring.

She licks her lips. She don’t move any closer to him outside, and she don’t look once at me. 

“Junior. . .” I start to whisper, just as she opens her mouth and says, “You know, I suspected it, I guess. But it’s mighty different seein’ you flesh and blood in the light.”

Sherlock bows his head. “I sure am flesh and blood,” he says back. “Your daddy here sees mighty well to that.”

I think I might evaporate up into the clouds. It ain’t real, none of this is real, Sherlock Holmes standing on a porch in Signal talking plain as day to my little girl. My little girl all grown and married with her own little girl startin’ to make a fuss inside.

Alma looks once at me, with something odd on her face, and I suddenly wonder, for the millionth time, whether she full well understands the whole situation, even now. If she could ever guess that I done fell asleep last night stark naked in Sherlock’s arms, after his chapped lips had slowly kissed every freckle on my belly and spine.

Her little baby starts to wail, and Alma steps back inside the door. “Come on, then,” she says. “Her Highness has decided it’s time to eat.”

I shiver when Sherlock’s hand secretly touches the small of my back as I duck inside.

I feel older than I ever have in my life steppin’ into their little house. It done looks like the exact copy of the house Alma kept for us back when we was married, with the wallpaper, and the doilies, the faded old woven rug. We follow her to a crib in the corner, and she bends down to pick up little screamin’ Wilma like it’s nothin’ at all.

I lean over her scrunched up red face and coo a bit. It chokes up my throat that she done got this big over the last months, while I was just a few hours away by truck but never once asked to come over and see her again. I stroke her tiny palm with my finger, and I suddenly realize that I ain’t have a clue what to call myself for her. If I’m papa, or grandad, or if those names all belong to Monroe, and I’m just “John.”

Alma kisses her pink forehead. “You ain’t gonna calm down to say hello to your granddaddy?” she whispers to Wilma. I look quick down at the floor so she don’t see the sheen of hot water that gets in my eyes. I know, better than anything on earth, that Sherlock is behind me understandin’ exactly what that word just meant.

“She’s too hungry to pay me any mind,” I finally say, when my throat is clear.

I expect Alma to place her in my hands while she finishes puttin’ together supper for us so she can feed the baby, but instead she turns towards Sherlock standin’ awkwardly in the center of the room with his hands deep in his back pockets, his hat hangin’ on a hook now by the door.

“You got kids, Scott?” she asks over Wilma cryin’.

He looks surprised and shakes his head. “No ma’am.”

Alma laughs. “Don’t ‘no ma’am’ me when you’s old enough to be my own daddy,” she says. “You ever held a baby before?”

Sherlock smirks. “I sure as hell have not.”

Something in me clenches tight. Something I can’t quite recognize. I stop myself from blurtin’ out that that’s the saddest thing I ever heard, and instead say, “Come on, now, don’t swear in front of the kid –”

“Aw you know she ain’t hearin’ a word of this, daddy,” Alma says, like I’m the one who’s the little kid, and she and Sherlock are lookin’ down at me like my own parents. 

I watch her walk towards Sherlock with Wilma still screamin’ up a storm in her arms. For the first time, I notice the dark circles under her eyes, shining like black silk, and I blink hard to remind myself she ain’t my old Alma holdin’ little Alma Jr. or Francine in her arms, waitin’ at the front door for me to get home from a twenty-hour workday to hold ‘em so she can go and take a hot bath. Hold their soft, pink skin with mud and blood and sweat still stainin’ my tired arms.

Countin’ down the long, aching days until my next trip with Sherlock, and hatin’ myself that I was.

The house is quiet. Too quiet. I blink, and my eyes focus to see Sherlock holdin’ Wilma in his arms, natural as the sun shines bright, and she’s lookin’ up at him wide-eyed without a peep in the gold light from the lace-covered lamp.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Alma says, shakin’ her head, then she backs into the kitchen. “You can hold her forever, Scott if she’s quiet as a mouse like that. Daddy, you gon’ help me, or what?”

“’Course, Junior,” I force myself to say, but I’m still staring at Sherlock with Wilma close against his chest. 

It makes me feel somethin’, somethin’ hot and sharp, to see him holdin’ my granddaughter in his arms. Something cold and hollow, too. For whatever reason, it makes me think of the countless times I watched Sherlock drive away from me in his truck, kickin’ up dust with the tires down the winding roads on Baker, while I stood back in an empty campsite with the impression of a tent beat into the dirt and grass.

He meets my eyes, a quick glance, and the world around me falls away. His grey eyes roam over my face, covering me like starlight when I used to lie on my back in a tent with him fast asleep in my arms. Back when we were young enough to sleep on the cold, hard ground without hurtin’ in the morning.

He nods toward Alma Jr. waitin’ for me in the kitchen. “ _I got this here covered, don’t worry,_ ” his look says, so soft I can nearly taste the fresh mountain grass, and I tear my eyes away before I get too lost in the sight. 

Just as I’m passin’ by him into the kitchen, I hear his voice whisperin’, low and deep to the dozing baby in his arms.

“Little double-yuh,” he says to Wilma, and I nearly stop in my tracks. I’m back up on Baker, back by the fire, with cigarettes in my lungs, and whiskey in my belly, and Sherlock Holmes’ knee touchin’ mine, his clear, young face pointed up at the endless night sky.

I know he said those words in that voice just for me. And as I enter the kitchen, and the smell of pot roast fills my nose, I suddenly realize what that hot and hollow feeling had meant. I remember, clear as yesterday, those nights I’d wake up sweatin’ and writhing from a black dream, and I’d walk on shaky legs without wakin’ Alma into the girls’ room. I’d pick one of ‘em up in my arms, slowly so they wouldn’t wake, and I’d hold them close to me in the dark, listening to their little lungs breathe.

I realize, watching my grown up little girl pull a roast out of the oven, that I have those memories, golden and dear, so fragile they sometimes feel like flower petals about to blow away. 

But Sherlock, he ain’t have nothin’ like those memories. Nothing at all. Just an empty trailer in Wyoming, in the Dakotas, in Colorado, in Texas. An empty trailer, and a table for one, and nobody else’s lungs makin’ noise while they breathe. I feel like I done went and stole something from him, somethin’ which he never even realized he could’ve owned. 

Hot shame I haven’t felt in a long time fills my lungs. The same shame I used to feel whenever I said, “ _See you next month_ ” after he whispered, “ _Let me cut you out, John._ ”

“You see a ghost, Daddy?”

Alma’s lookin’ at me strange, with worry on her forehead. I smile and reach out to pat the back of her head, her soft hair.

“Just got caught in a dream smellin’ that heavenly roast of yours, Junior,” I say. “Might even be better than your momma’s.”

“Don’t be lettin’ her hear you say that,” she says back, then freezes. I clear my throat. We both know it’ll be a day in hell freezed over the next time I ever come face to face with her momma. 

Alma tucks a lock of hair behind her ear and clears her throat. Yet another little way that she is her momma reincarnate. 

“I won’t . . .” she starts. She don’t meet my eyes as she tosses a salad. “Daddy, I ain’t gonna tell Kurt about you comin’ down here tonight,” she says. “Obviously I ain’t tellin’ him a word about Scott. Don’t even know what I would say – dead man up and walkin’ through our house. But . . .” She shrugs her shoulders.

A small, fragile piece inside of me breaks.

“S’alright, Junior,” I say, stepping back. “Look, if you’s worried about us comin’ round here a lot, I can promise you, we ain’t expectin’ to be invited a lot, or ever. Just havin’ today with you is . . . well, it’s –”

Her hand is on my arm. I notice a gravy stain on the top of her white apron. “I didn’t mean it like that, Daddy. Not at all,” she says.

I look into her soft face, look at my own eyes starin’ back at me from her head. My voice sounds thin and small. “What you tryin’ to say, then, Junior?” I ask, barely hearing myself talk.

She looks down at her hands over the cutting board. Her fingernails are painted bright, fresh red. “You know what, I was scared you wasn’t gonna come today,” she says instead.

I don’t say anything back. I was scared I wasn’t gonna make it either, holding my fist in front of my mouth the whole way over, starin’ out the window unseeing at the endless plains while Sherlock silently drove.

The thought of even lookin’ Kurt in the eye fills me with a wild, hidden fear. I wonder if Alma can see, if she could sense, if she somehow knew.

I pick up a dishrag to wipe off the glasses sitting on the counter even though they’re already dry as a field in drought. “Tell me this, Junior,” I say, keeping my voice low even though I suspect Sherlock can still hear every word. “How is it you . . . you said you suspected, you know. . .”

I feel incapable and dumb, dumber than a pile of rocks, but Alma just looks quietly at my hands cradling the glass. She looks at them for a long time. I can feel her eyes tracin’ the scars. The wrinkles. The old spots from the harsh sun.

“You know, I remember that day,” she finally says. I can hear Sherlock whisperin’ to Wilma in the next room. “That time we met Scott, when you was gonna take us to the pool. You and him was talkin’ after you introduced us, sayin’ something I couldn’t hear, and then he was getting back in his truck and he drove clear away, back the way he came.”

I can still taste the dirt from his tires on my tongue. Can still remember the exact way the weeds had rustled, whisperin’ in the empty wind. “You do, huh?” I say, even lower.

She nods, then turns to look out the tiny kitchen window over the sink. “Look on your face after, when you got back in the truck to drive us, I didn’t understand it. I was too young. Looked like you’d been broken clear in half. Like you was bleedin’ but there weren’t any blood. Thought at the time you was just real upset we wasn’t gonna have enough time to swim in the pool.”

She smiles, and I chuckle under my breath. The roast is slowly gettin’ cold sitting uneaten on the table, but she don’t move to put it back in the oven to save it. Neither do I.

“Look, I know I ain’t knowin’ what really happened and all,” she says. “How in hell he managed to . . you know. But that day I came to visit you in your trailer to tell you ‘bout me and Kurt? You had the same look on your face. Exact same one, like I done went back in time. Only once I saw your room up at the new house that I put all the pieces together.”

“He did it for me,” I hear myself say, like somethin’ else has gone and grabbed control of my voice. I feel like I’m trapped back in that black box, back in ‘Nam, only I have a little hammer in my hand, and I’m hammerin’ my way out. Splintering the thick wood with the bare skin of my hands, tryin’ to reach the air. 

“I thought . . .” I clear my wet throat. “I thought he was really gone, those times you seen me. I thought he was . . .” My voice shakes. “I thought he was gone.”

Suddenly, like a burst of sky breaking through a storm, Wilma squeals in the other room, and the both of us startle and jump. I feel like I’m balancin’ on the edge of a cliff, and only Alma knows which way I’m ‘bout to fall. I tamp down the little flare of panic when she picks up the roast to walk away with it out of the kitchen. Feelin’ like somehow, if she walks away, her and I will never talk so open like that again.

But she turns back to me, two steps away, and I see in her eyes she’s done heard every damn thing I just said. “Thing I’m tryin’ to tell you is,” she says, standing there beautiful in her home with the gravy stain on her apron, “I want you to know Wilma. The both of you. I ain’t goin’ six whole months without seeing you again, whatever we gotta do. You hear?”

I realize I’m still holding the single glass in my hand. For the first time in a long time, I’m reminded that Sherlock wasn’t the only one who could ever make me feel like I was back breathin’ the air up on Baker, fresh and clean in my lungs.

I can hear the coyotes moanin’ in the wind standin’ smack in the middle of her kitchen. The way the tent glowed, and the stars sighed, and the fire smoke wrapped around our skin together like a cloak.

“I hear you, Junior,” I say. I tip my head, the way they done taught me to do in the Army. “Loud and clear.”

-

Sherlock is oddly quiet the whole drive back after supper. I don’t press him. It’s not our way. But I watch him in the window all the same, keepin’ vigil. The way he holds his hands too still in his lap. The line of his jaw.

I watch my headlights dance with clouds dust along the road, turnin’ from paved, to dirt, to gravel as we wind closer and closer up into our land.

Our land.

The thought of it still gives me shivers deep along my spine. I see Sherlock’s eyes in the wooden front door, and his curls in the tall grass, and his hands, his long fingers, in the spokes of freshly whitewashed fence.

He don’t say nothin’ at all as we silently step inside and get ourselves ready for bed. Don’t talk about Junior, or her house, or how it was holdin’ a baby for the first time in all his years. He don’t talk about how Wilma had reached out for him, wailin’, as we tipped our hats goodbye and walked down the steps off the porch.

I lie in our bed under the thick blanket alone for a long, long time, until I finally hear his footsteps creepn’ towards me through the dark. It’s a sound I’d know clear anywhere, over anything on earth, without a speck of doubt. 

He climbs in beside me, skin warm from a long bath, and I think he’s just ‘bout to drift off to a silent sleep when he whispers in the dark, “Hold me, John.”

His voice tears me apart. I ain’t heard him talk like that in what feels like months, in years. I move so fast I fear I’ll fall right out the bed. Pull him quick into my arms, bare skin against my chest, my cheek in his curls. 

He clings to me, shaking, in a way he ain’t done since we was just kids. Harder, even, than that night we met up again in that hotel, fallin’ into each other like shootin’ stars soaring on the same path. Closer than that night in my trailer, when I couldn’t believe he was alive, and when I thought I’d wake up from that blessed dream come sunrise, and he would still be dead.

I can still smell bits of mud and straw in his hair even over his sharp shampoo. It drowns me in the feel of him, lyin’ real and solid in my arms. His heartbeat races against my skin. A lightnin’ horse galloping straight through my own chest, burstin’ across the plains and tryin’ to break through my ribs.

“I got you,” I whisper, because we’re lyin’ in the dark, and I can say those sorts of things when the lights is finally turned off. When we’re truly alone. 

And I wonder what in hell we must look like, two grown men clinging to bare skin, as I press my lips to his curls and whisper again, “Alright now, I got you.”

-

When my eyes drift open at dawn, I instantly know the rest of the bed is cold. 

A year ago, I woulda up and panicked, wonderin’ if he finally packed up and left, realizin’ I sure as hell wasn’t worth it – any of it at all. 

But now I calmly sit up and pull on my worn jeans and boots, taking my time so my muscles are awake.

I know exactly where I’ll find him.

I make a pot of black coffee, standing in the dark in the kitchen, knowin’ where to find everything by the feel of my hands alone. The sky slowly grows grey, creeping into the shadows and corners around the house. I feel it caress my cheek, the back of my neck, the palms of my hands like a drifting ghost.

I spot his silhouette immediately when I duck out the back door into the chill. I wrap my jacket tighter ‘round myself and set off towards the fence, where he’s leanin’ watching the horses graze for breakfast as the early mist starts to clear.

He don’t even flinch when I crunch up behind him. Don’t say a word when I hand him the mug full of coffee, but he takes a long sip.

We stand there for a long time, watchin’ the horses slowly roam through the tall grass, bending their long, steaming necks through the mist, and the early sun shining in their coats. Baker appears, slow, like it’s takin’ its sweet time to start the day. It rises through the fog, pressin’ up into the clouds and brilliant green. Haloed with gleaming white which pours its light down on through the rocky pass.

I jump when Sherlock finally speaks. I had done near forgotten he was even there, save for the warm press of his arm against mine through his flannel shirt.

“What kinda place is it we’re leavin’ for Wilma, John?” he asks.

His voice is rough and fragile, like stepping out onto a frozen lake, and the thin ice rips and cracks. It sounds like those last dying embers of our last campfires on the last nights of our trips, when we would sit and watch the flames until they was nothin’ more but thin, grey smoke. Neither one of us sayin’ a word. Neither one of us suggestin’ it was time to sleep so we were rested enough the next day to leave.

I look over at his hands clasped on top of the fence, at the old scars from holding his rodeo rope. “You sayin’ you wanna leave her the house? The land?” I ask, even though I know clear as day that ain’t what he means.

He grins in the corner of his mouth, a sad grin, and I know he’s thinkin’ the same thing. Then his lips shake, and I watch helpless as something crumbles on his face. Something I last saw that night he ran out to me across the fields, after I’d taken a walk all day, and he’d thought I’d up and left him without even a word. It rips through my core, steals the breath out from my lungs.

He looks out over the fields, over our land, and I imagine I can see flames from a campfire reflectin’ in his eyes, soothed by a mountain spring.

“You know,” he finally says, voice low, “Sometimes . . . with all my little cases I like to solve, all those letters I send in to the police. . . Sometimes I feel like I’m watchin’ the world burn, right down to ashes, and there ain’t nothin’ I can do to stop it. I just gotta stand there helpless and watch it burn.”

My throat grows hot. “Sherlock . . .” I start to say, but he goes on, voice rough, “And I know she ain’t even mine, I don’t have any claim to her, not anything, but I wanna protect her from it all, you know? I wanna . . . I don’t wanna give her this world, John. Not like this. Not the way it is. For her. She’s too . . . she shouldn’t have to have that. All of this. The . . . the flames, and the ashes. That ain’t hers to carry.”

It dawns on me that Sherlock ain’t hardly ever said anything so private to me before, so personal. That he’s given me his home, his heart, his literal life for decades of my own, and yet I ain’t never stood there and heard him try not to cry about anything – not since those times, years ago, when he would beg me not to get back in my truck and leave.

I clear my throat. “You ain’t talkin’ sense,” I say, real soft. “I know you heard what Alma said to me in the kitchen, that she wants us to be in Wilma’s life, both of us. No reason you can’t try and be there for her, too –”

“And who will I be? Huh?” Sherlock turns to me, and the pain I see rip through his eyes is so sudden, so sharp, I feel like I’m getting’ shot in the chest all over again, bloodied flesh in the jungle. “Who in hell will I be to her?” he cries.

“You saw the way she was lookin’ at you last night,” I say, hoping I don’t sound as desperate as I feel. “You can’t tell me she wasn’t totally at peace in your arms, that she didn’t love you holdin’ her, and she reached for you when we lef –”

“And what happens when she’s three years old, when she’s old enough to understand it all, to know who’s holding her in their arms? What then? What happens when she’s ten? When she’s fifteen?”

“Hell, Sherlock, what are you –”

He kicks the fence suddenly with his foot, gruntin’ hard at the burst of pain in his toes. I flinch. 

“Shit, John, nearly nothin’ on this here earth made me happier than watching Alma call you granddaddy, you know that. You know that I . . .” His voice breaks, “That I see. But I’m . . . shit, I’m . . .” 

I watch, feelin’ small and helpless, trapped, as a tear falls down his cheek. He stops to wipe it away with his forearm, and his eyes shine, rimmed with red. “How am I supposed to protect her from it all, how can I try to be that in her life, when I’m just stuck for years being ‘granddaddy’s friend Scott’? Who the fuck am I to think that . . . And it is hell to me, hell on earth, that she gotta live in a world where . . .”

He shakes his head, and a wild grunt rips through his throat. “You know what, John, I know we don’t say this kinda shit. I know we don’t need to. I like it that way, that you understand me better’n any living thing on this earth, but I’m gonna say it now. I have to . . . I can’t . . . I fucking hate that I only met this little girl for two goddamn hours, and it feels worse than all those times I drove away from you combined to know that I can’t ever tell her that, since I was nineteen fucking years old, the only real bright light in my life, in this whole damn burning world, has been her granddaddy. Has been John Watson. Since I was _nineteen_. That the only person I ever trusted enough to . . . fuck, to – to hold, to tell my name, is the man who gives her too many Christmas presents every year. Call it pathetic or whatever the hell you want, but I’m telling you, I cannot bear the thought of goin’ the rest of my life with her thinkin’ I’m granddaddy’s friend Scott. You are my . . . Christ, you know you are . . . and I’m tellin’ you, I can hardly stand it.”

I hear myself moan. I don’t even try to stop it comin’ out. Then I pull him down into my arms, press his cheek into my neck, hold his spine.

“Christ, Sherlock,” I whisper, barely even a sound.

He holds me closer, so close I think my bones will break. I want them to.

“I want her to know,” he says into my skin, rough and broken. “I need her to know.”

I splay my fingers firm across the back of his neck. Close my eyes. “Little darlin’,” I say, near too choked up in my throat to speak. He cries out a moan at the words, shakin’ in my arms, and I say it again, rich and clear under the wide open sky, so that all the clouds can hear, so that it reaches the little streams on Baker, “I got you, little darlin’.”

What feels like hours later, when the sun is burnin’ high in the sky, Sherlock speaks again. The words tickle my neck. “I feel like a right fool,” he whispers.

I sigh against his forehead, holdin’ his weight with my chest. “Why is that?”

“Got everything I ever wanted,” he says. “You in my life, our land, this place, meetin’ your girls. . . Standin’ here with you like this.” He rubs his palm up my spine, then shifts to lean more against me in my arms. “But I -- I hate this world, John. I hate that I . . .” He swallows hard, and the back of my neck prickles at what he’s about to say.

“Yeah?” I whisper.

He shivers. “I hate that I feel the fool for wantin’ things to be different. For the – for this all to be a place where she could . . . where Wilma could know. Where she could just . . grow up and know. No big deal about it.”

My heart aches in my chest, and water suddenly fills my eyes. I feel absolutely alone on the planet, alone with Sherlock Holmes in my arms, smellin’ like sunlight and earth and straw. “You’re not a fool,” I breathe. “Not a fool for wantin’ that at all, shit –”

“I just want her to know,” he moans again, pained and tired. “I – I wanna help her, to be there for her, and I want her to know.”

Something fills me from the inside – something I first felt that second time he ever brought his mouth to mine in the tent, and I had suddenly understood, with a wild emotion, that I’d been livin’ my whole life without understandin’ half my skin.

“Maybe . . .” I whisper. The words stop in my throat. 

I remember holding the shirt to my face up in his sweaty little attic – my shirt that he had stolen and kept all those years. I remember the loss, the heavin’ longing, eating away like fire and ice in the pit of my gut. The goddamn pain of it all.

The way the heavens had opened up on me when I saw him standin’ alive again outside my lonely trailer.

I put my hand on his cheek and pull his face away, so he can look down into mine. I don’t wipe away the water on my cheeks.

“My . . . my little love,” I say, and he gasps a little, deep in his throat, because neither of us has ever gone and said, not even after all this time. “My little love,” I say again, “We—we just gotta hope for one day.”

His eyes look like the first stars I saw my first night in our house – the house he bought and built for me, with Baker lookin’ down over his shoulder at him working, all alone.

“One day what?” he whispers.

I pull his face down and kiss him, right on the mouth. Right under the morning sky, with the birds soarin’ overhead, and the horses in the field. Right there in view of the whole rest of the world.

I taste my entire life on his lips.

“That one day things’ll go and be different,” I whisper against his mouth. “That we can . . . that Wilma could know, that . . . that people, everyone could know that you’re . . . that we’re . . .That we wouldn’t have to live like this.”

“I hate being afraid. I hate –”

“Maybe,” I whisper, breathless. I hold him close. “Shit, maybe . . .”

“It’s all too dark,” he moans against my chest. I ain’t never heard him talk like that before in my life – so helpless and lost, like a little bird that tried to fly to the top of a mountain and got too tired halfway. “It’s too . . . I can’t see it all, the way you can. It’s . . . everything’s too dark –”

“Look at me,” I say. I wait until he meets my eyes. I shake his face gently in my hands. “Look here at me.”

He stares at me, and I know he understands what the hell I’m tryin’ to do. That he done just told me two minutes ago that I’m the brightest light in his life, and that I’m here, here in his arms, and there isn’t nothing on earth that’s ever gonna change that fact.

He leans forward and presses his cheek to mine. Clenches his fists in the back of my shirt. He takes a long, slow breath. “I hope to God, John, that I can see that day. With you. I hope . . . more than anything . . .”

“My only love,” I say, knowin’ the full truth of the words as I say them. I kiss him again, caressing his face in my rough hands. “We just gotta hold on.” I trace his cheek with my thumb. “Just gotta hope for one day.”

“Tell me you believe it, John,” he whispers. He sounds exhausted, and his body sags limp in my arms. His eyes look like the water of the endless lake after we had that one shatterin’ fight on the shore.

I nod, even as the weight of the world hangs heavy on my tired shoulders. Alma’s face from that day in my hallway floats in my mind, as the truth of it all had flashed across her eyes seein’ Sherlock’s boots and jacket through the bedroom door. I see little Wilma lookin’ up awestruck at Sherlock the night before like he was the sun.

I nod again, and the power of it fills my lungs with the Baker sky.

“I do,” I tell him. The truth of it sings in my blood. He kisses my palm and sighs. The sunlight reflects off his skin like gold, and I feel that I’ve somehow, only now, understood every goddamn part of myself. 

“We just gotta hold on,” I say again, lookin’ straight into his deep grey eyes. We’re back on the mountain, back under the open sky, back that first breathless summer when we didn’t worry ‘bout nothin’ but firewood and our next canned meal.

“Hold on,” I whisper. I bring my forehead to his. “God, little darlin', one day.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'll admit I wrote this very quickly, and didn't edit over-much, since it was more about processing my own emotions. Nevertheless, I'd love to hear from you all as we revisit our two favorite cowboys under the Wyoming sky :)
> 
> Y'all are great, and I appreciate this creative outlet and community more than I can say. Especially on days like today. My love to you all.


End file.
